Terms of Service

7. Referral programme

This section governs every Shop Pilot referral link, referral code, introductory discount, referral relationship, pending benefit, validated referral credit, and referral-funded shop-capacity allocation. It forms part of these Terms rather than a separate agreement.

7.1 Eligibility and direct referrals only

• You must have an active Shop Pilot account, current acceptance of these Terms, an active referral privilege, and an eligible active, trialling, renewing, or cancel-at-period-end subscription. A valid payment method may be required. Enterprise participation depends on the active campaign and any recorded enterprise agreement.
• The referred customer must be genuinely new. Existing paid customers cannot receive a new-customer referral discount. Self-referrals, duplicate controlled identities, synthetic accounts, circular arrangements, and attempts to refer another account controlled by the same person or business are prohibited.
• The programme is direct and single-level. You may receive benefits only from customers you personally refer. There are no downlines, indirect rewards, team commissions, recursive commissions, or benefits from customers referred by one of your referrals.
• If your subscription or referral privilege becomes inactive, previously validated credit remains recorded, but new benefits and use of preserved credit may be held until eligibility is restored unless Shop Pilot records an authorised exception.

7.2 Permanent access-key referral codes and attribution

• Every Shop Pilot access key receives one distinct, permanent referral code. The code remains attached to that key across sign-outs, devices, campaign changes, and later sign-ins. It is not rotated or replaced merely because an offer ends.
• A valid referral-link click creates a pending attribution only. It does not create a benefit or guarantee campaign availability. The standard attribution window is 30 days unless the active campaign records another period.
• A new customer may manually enter a valid code before the first eligible successful payment. A manual code may replace an unlocked link or cookie attribution. The first eligible successful payment permanently locks the one direct-referrer relationship, which cannot then be transferred.
• One referred account may have only one direct referrer. Server records determine the valid code, referrer, campaign, attribution window, lock time, and status.

7.3 Campaign transition and protected relationship terms

• The founding offer gives a new referred customer 20% off the first eligible invoice, capped at €500. A qualifying referrer receives 15% on the first three successful eligible payments and 10% on every successful eligible payment after that.
• When the founding offer ends or reaches its platform limit, no new referral code is created. Every existing active code automatically continues under the standard offer for new referrals: the new customer receives 15% off the first eligible invoice, capped at €300, and the direct referrer receives 10% on each successful eligible payment.
• Campaign eligibility is assigned when the referred customer makes the first eligible successful payment. Shop Pilot stores the assigned campaign version on the relationship. Qualified founding relationships keep their founding reward schedule; the transition to the standard offer applies to later relationships using the same permanent code and does not reduce an already qualified relationship.
• A founding place is reserved at the first eligible payment and becomes qualified only after validation. If its payment is rejected, refunded, disputed, reversed, charged back, or fails required checks before qualification, the reservation may be released safely.
• Custom campaigns may specify their own discount, cap, rates, validation periods, capacity multiplier, and limits. Their recorded version remains attached to the applicable relationship.

7.4 Eligible payments and benefit calculation

• A benefit can arise only from eligible subscription cash successfully collected from the directly referred customer. Taxes, external discounts, internal credits, refunds, disputes, chargebacks, and ineligible services are excluded. Amounts are determined server-side and stored in integer cents.
• Standard relationships receive 10% on every successful eligible payment. Qualified founding relationships follow the protected 15%/10% schedule above. Custom relationships follow their recorded campaign version.
• There is no 12-payment limit, maximum rewarded-invoice count, or fixed reward-duration limit while the directly referred customer remains active and makes eligible successful payments.
• A failed, unpaid, zero-net, fully refunded, disputed, charged-back, fabricated, or otherwise ineligible invoice generates no benefit and does not advance the successful-payment ordinal.

7.5 Validation, manual review, and qualification

• The first referred-payment benefit is normally pending for 14 days and a renewal benefit for 7 days, unless the assigned campaign records another period. Pending amounts are estimates and are not spendable.
• Before validation, Shop Pilot may recheck payment status, refunds, disputes, relationship status, account eligibility, identity signals, and fraud state. An administrator may approve a pending payment early, reject a payment, approve or reject a referral, resolve a fraud review, reverse a benefit, restore a corrected benefit, suspend referral privileges, block a code, or add an audit note.
• Approving a referral relationship does not invent or approve a payment. A relationship without a recorded successful payment remains registered. A payment under review remains pending until its validation period completes or an administrator explicitly approves that payment.
• After successful validation, the relationship becomes qualified and the benefit is added to the referrer’s available referral-credit ledger. If validation occurs after a billing cutoff, the credit remains available for a later eligible invoice or capacity purchase.

7.6 Nature and permitted use of referral credit

• Referral credit is a Shop Pilot subscription benefit, not cash, wages, income paid by Shop Pilot, a bank balance, or a commission payout. It cannot be withdrawn, transferred, sold, assigned, exchanged for cash, or used outside eligible Shop Pilot billing.
• Validated credit carries forward until used and does not expire. It may accumulate across billing cycles. It can reduce an eligible invoice to €0 but never below €0, and only the amount actually applied is deducted.
• The ledger is append-only. Corrections, reversals, restorations, and administrative adjustments are recorded as new entries rather than silently rewriting historical entries.
• You remain responsible for any legal, accounting, disclosure, or tax obligations that apply to you. Shop Pilot does not provide legal or tax advice.

7.7 Bill reduction and shop-capacity upgrades

• In bill-reduction mode, the applied amount is limited by your selected credit, available validated balance, eligible invoice, and campaign coverage limit. Unused credit carries forward.
• In shop-capacity mode, the full monthly price increase for the selected total is prorated in integer cents by the exact time remaining between the current subscription-period start and end. Selected referral credit and any campaign multiplier apply to that prorated value; they do not increase the ledger balance or create cash.
• Any remaining prorated cash amount must be confirmed in full. The paid shop slots activate immediately in the same transaction and become part of the subscribed plan. The subscription dates do not move, and the full upgraded monthly plan price applies at the next renewal and later renewals until the plan is changed.
• The public pricing selector displays 1 through 100 shops. Server-side capacity calculations may support larger totals under the same pricing rules; above 1,000 shops requires a recorded enterprise agreement or Contact Sales.
• If paid capacity later falls through a downgrade, cancellation, or non-payment, Shop Pilot may provide a warning and grace period before restricting excess active shops. Stored shop data is preserved; excess shops are not silently disconnected or deleted.

7.8 Cancellation, downgrade, reactivation, refunds, and reversals

• Cancellation or non-payment stops future benefits after the applicable paid-through period. A valid already-paid invoice may still validate unless it is refunded, disputed, reversed, charged back, fraudulent, or otherwise ineligible.
• A paid shop-capacity upgrade applies immediately at its prorated price; its full plan price applies at renewal. Downgrades apply according to the recorded subscription change. Reactivation resumes the existing relationship without restarting founding invoice ordinals or creating a new reward limit.
• A refund, dispute, chargeback, or reversal during validation may reject the pending benefit. A later reversal of a validated source payment creates an offsetting ledger entry. If affected credit was already used, later validated benefits first offset the resulting negative adjustment.
• If a chargeback is won or a recorded error is corrected, Shop Pilot may restore the benefit through a new positive ledger entry.

7.9 Fraud and abuse review

• Shop Pilot may assess payment-card fingerprints, legal-owner identity, verified business or tax identity, billing identity, device patterns, email risk, network signals, unusual signup bursts, coordinated cancellation or refund patterns, and attempts to rotate the same person or business through new accounts.
• A shared IP address alone is not an automatic rejection. Shared offices, agencies, families, and public networks may be legitimate; IP matching is one lower-weight signal.
• Fraud review is opened by risk signals, not by pressing a payment-reject button. An open review holds pending benefits until an administrator approves, rejects, or continues monitoring it. Rejecting a payment or referral is a review outcome and does not itself manufacture a new fraud signal.
• Shop Pilot may monitor, hold, approve, reject, suspend, reverse, or restore programme activity after documented review. Validated balances remain subject to legitimate source-payment reversals and ledger corrections.

7.10 Sharing disclosures, records, and programme changes

• When sharing a referral link, code, endorsement, recommendation, or testimonial, clearly disclose nearby that you may receive Shop Pilot subscription credit if the recipient becomes a paying customer. Do not hide the disclosure, misrepresent the offer, send spam, impersonate another person, or condition an incentive on a positive review.
• Shop Pilot may retain campaign versions, consent, attribution, payment-validation, fraud-review, benefit, ledger, and capacity records as necessary to operate the programme, resolve disputes, prevent abuse, and comply with law.
• Referral notifications are informational. Server records control if a notification, browser preview, estimate, or copied link conflicts with the authoritative account state.
• Shop Pilot may change future campaign terms, pause the programme, or end an offer with appropriate notice. Permanent codes remain attached to their access keys, validated credit remains subject to the no-expiration rule, and recorded protected terms for already qualified relationships are not retroactively reduced.